Evolution of a Newsie Cap
by Matril
Summary: Lizzie Bennet Diaries. The story of Lizzie's love/hate relationship with a piece of headwear.
1. Origins

_Mostly silly, very fluffy. Chapters will be pretty short. Hope you enjoy!_

Charlotte was coming over in about a half an hour so they could film their very first video. Lizzie had spent the last few days studying examples of just about every vlogger on YouTube, so she had a pretty good idea of what she was going to do. Still, she felt like something was missing, some kind of unique element that would distinguish her video from thousands of others.

Maybe props? She scanned her bookshelves, looking for something interesting or striking. Nothing really stood out. She crossed the room to her closet, digging into the back where she kept the clothes she never wore but couldn't throw away. Like that horrible t-shirt her mother gave her. Lizzie pulled it out with a grimace, but then it turned into a smile.

She had just found her opening line.

Lizzie checked the time. Still twenty minutes. What other props could she use? There might be something useful in the attic. There was always tons of stuff up there that her mother was too sentimental to get rid of.

She dug through a few boxes, sneezing at the dust she was disturbing, but she didn't find anything promising until she came across a container simply labeled _Hats_. It was a veritable treasure trove of ridiculous headwear, from the floppy-brimmed sunhats her mother collected to the various caps her father had preferred at one time or another over the last forty-plus years.

The idea came to her in a flash. Costumes.

She dug deeper until she found the perfect one, bright blue and flamboyantly huge. Pair it with a colorful shawl, and she'd have the perfect encapsulation of her mother. Now, what about Dad? She had narrowed it down to two choices, one in each hand, until finally deciding on the one in her left. She scampered downstairs, leaving the newsie cap behind. There was just enough time before Charlotte showed up to scrawl out some kind of script for her costumed versions of her parents. This was going to be fun.

_A few weeks later..._

Lizzie was in no mood to make a video. She'd already said all she wanted to say about the wedding in her last video, and that was the good stuff with Jane and Bing. Well, mostly good. Mom's fist-pump was pretty awful. But anyway, one episode about the wedding was enough. She did _not_ want to talk about the massively unpleasant experience she had had. It was just a bad memory that needed to be forgotten. Talking about it on her blog would be the opposite of helping.

Trouble was, she couldn't think of anything else to talk about.

Grumpily, she climbed the steps to the attic, hoping she'd find some random thing up there to base a video around. It was a long shot, but she had to think of something pretty quick. Lydia was begging to be in the next one, and Lizzie figured it was easier to throw her a bone than keep trying to fend her off. She just had to come up with a nice, reasonable topic.

She scanned the boxes without much hope of seeing anything useful. Then her eyes fell on the newsie cap, still resting where she had left it on the day she made her first video. And a grin slowly spread across her face.

Maybe she could talk about Darcy after all. Maybe she even _wanted _to talk about Darcy, if it meant making fun of him and his stiff, robotic, stuffy doucheyness. Oh, yes. This was perfect. If only she still had that velcro-fastening bowtie from the time she dressed as Thomas Edison for a school report – but wait, it might still be in the attic too.

Ten minutes later she emerged, covered with dust and grime, but triumphantly bearing her Darcy costume. "Hey, Lydia!" she called at her sister's door. "Get ready. As soon as I clean up, we're going to make my video."


	2. Evisceration

Bing was absolutely over the moon when Jane and Lizzie arrived at Netherfield. Lizzie was kind of surprised his feet were still touching the ground. He bounded forward, waving with an almost scary enthusiasm as they climbed out of the car. While Jane and Bing hugged and he murmured some sappy thing in her ear, Lizzie looked around and noted that Darcy was lurking by the doorway, his usual scowl in place. When he realized she had spotted him, he looked startled, frowned deeper and slunk inside.

She almost hadn't packed her props for costume theater. Her suitcase was already pretty stuffed thanks to two weeks' worth of clothes and all her filming equipment. But she tossed it all in a bag at the last minute, a bag she was currently carrying on her shoulder. After seeing Darcy skulking around like that, she was very glad to have the cap and bowtie with her. Venting about him in costume might be the only thing that kept her from going insane during their stay at Netherfield.

"Do you need any help with your stuff, Lizzie?" Bing asked, already comically laden with Jane's suitcases.

"No, I'm good, thanks," she answered as she fought a smile. "I'm pretty sure you've reached your load limit."

"Yeah, I guess," he grinned, "but Darcy could help. Hey, Darcy! Get out here and be useful."

"That's okay," Lizzie said very quickly. "Really, I'm fine." It was a totally irrational fear, but what if he glanced in her bag and saw the cap and bowtie and started asking questions? Or noticed how heavy her suitcase was and realized there was more than just clothing in there? Maybe filming her videos here was a bad idea after all.

No, she was just being paranoid. She was going to carry her own stuff, and she was going to be careful, and Darcy would probably avoid her just as determinedly as she planned to avoid him. She noticed that he hadn't reemerged even after Bing called him. He'd probably retreated to some dark corner of the house where he wouldn't have to lower himself by interacting with other human beings.

Surprisingly, she didn't need the costume at first. She was preoccupied with Jane and Bing and ethical quandaries, and with Caroline's unexpected friendliness. It was Caroline, though, who encouraged her to bring out the costume when she could see just how much Darcy was getting on her nerves. It was surprisingly helpful. Sometimes he got so aggravating that all she could do was glare at him and think _Just you wait till I'm making my video. _The thought of the cap and bowtie waiting in her bag was an almost tangible comfort.

By the time their overextended stay at Netherfield had finally ended, Lizzie found she had become very fond of the newsie cap. It reminded her that whatever Darcy might think of her, she was clever and witty and quite capable of eviscerating him, thank you very much.


	3. Superior

_I wanted to explore why Lizzie brought the Darcy costume to Collins and Collins, and then it ended up being more about Lizzie and Lydia. Well, that's important too. :)_

"You're really gonna take all those stupid costumes with you?" Lydia was sprawled out on her stomach on Lizzie's bed, watching her finish packing for her visit with Charlotte.

"Sure, why not?" Lizzie said, folding up the shawl for Mom's costume. "It's just one extra bag. You never know when I might need one of them."

"Even this one?" Lydia reached for the newsie cap and twirled it in her hands. "I kinda thought you'd already said all there was to say about Darce-face, now that he's gone."

"Gone and good riddance. No, I probably won't need it." She took it back from Lydia. "I'm bringing it anyway. I guess I just want to have the complete set of costumes with me."

Lydia snorted. "You're such a dork."

"Come on." Lizzie stuffed the cap into the bag, zipped up her suitcase and shoved Lydia's shoulder. "You should be nice to your big sister. She's going away for more than a week."

"Whatevs." Lydia sat up, tossing her hair. "We were apart for a month and I hardly missed you."

"Thanks a lot. I'm going to be a lot farther away, you know."

"So?"

Lizzie shrugged. She wasn't sure what she was expecting. Pleading with her not to leave? That was just dumb. Lizzie was depressed when Jane left for L.A., but she shouldn't expect Lydia to feel the same now. It wasn't even close to the same thing.

She shouldered her costume bag. "Help me get this stuff down to the car?"

Lydia let out a peal of laughter. "You're kidding, right? Like you could get me to lug your junk downstairs."

"Wishful thinking," Lizzie said with a grunt as she pulled her suitcase off the bed.

Lydia did follow her out to the car, at least, and sort of helped Lizzie lift the suitcase into the trunk. "Ugh, your camera stuff is so heavy," she groaned. "You should just use your phone, like me. It's totes easy and the video looks fine."

"Sure it does," Lizzie said, rolling her eyes as she slammed the trunk shut and opened the driver's side door.

"Maybe I'll make some more while you're gone." Lydia paused, then said, "You'll watch them, right?"

"Uh-huh." Lizzie was only half-listening, digging through the glove compartment where the road map was supposed to be but wasn't. "If I have the time."

"I always watch yours, even when they're lame," Lydia huffed.

_That's because mine are way better quality and way better content_, Lizzie thought, but she didn't say it out loud. Better to placate Lydia with something less argumentative. She climbed back out of the car and said, "Stop calling my videos lame, and then we'll have a deal."

"Stop making lame videos."

Well, this was going nowhere. "I'm going to go back in and say goodbye to Mom and Dad," she said. "Then I'll be on my way."

Lydia nodded. "So. Just a week."

Lizzie looked at her sideways. "Would you rather it was longer?"

A casual shrug. "I just thought you might pull a Jane and stay there forever."

"A Jane? Is that what we're calling it now?" Lizzie shook her head. "Not a chance of that, anyway. I'm not going there for a job. I already turned that down."

Lydia was unusually quiet while Lizzie said her goodbyes to her parents, but the phase passed quickly, and she was waving manically from the driveway as Lizzie pulled away. She didn't know why she let Lydia's insults get under her skin so easily. They were totally unfounded. Lame videos. Right. Because Lydia's were so polished and popular.

A glance at her bag of costumes, resting on the passenger seat next to her, gave her the usual comfort. Lydia had to know Lizzie's ideas for costume theater were brilliant, even if she would never admit it out loud. She could capture someone's essence with just a few carefully chosen props and mannerisms. Her viewers loved the costumes; they were always commenting on them. Some of the most enthusiastic responses had come from the bits with Darcy. She had always known that newsie cap was a good idea.


	4. Mistaken

Lizzie returned to the office, sank back to the bench and rubbed her aching cheeks. Well, that was wretched. Darcy, here at Collins and Collins. And somehow pretending nothing had happened with Bing and Jane. Heartless robot. All morning she had been in a great mood, and now it was completely shot.

She glanced at her bag of costumes. Huh. Guess the newsie cap would come in handy after all. That was some consolation. Her dark mood lightened just a little bit. Impersonating the heartless robot. It might be just the cure she needed.

It helped again in the next video, and the next after that. Fitz was surprisingly eager to mock his supposed friend, though she had to acknowledge his performance was more of a straightforward imitation than mockery. In any case, just seeing that newsie hat perched atop his enormous hair was hilarious.

Charlotte had never performed as Darcy before, but it wasn't that hard. There wasn't much to reenact from Lizzie's weird, mostly one-sided conversation with him. Costume theater wasn't as useful this time, though. She thought it might make some sense of Darcy's bizarre behavior. Nope. After filming the video, she was as stumped as ever.

Later that week, she went from being stumped to being furious.

How could she even process what Fitz had unwittingly revealed to her? The sheer scope of Darcy's interfering, arrogant cold-heartedness was too much to even comprehend. The newsie cap and bowtie, which she could always depend upon, were useless. Before starting her video on Sunday, she picked up the cap, twisted it in her hands, and tossed it back down in disgust. There was nothing to reenact, and even if there were, she just wasn't in the mood. Costume theater couldn't fix this. She couldn't distance herself from this with props and exaggerated voices and mannerisms.

What she really wanted was a straightforward rant. So she ranted and ranted and ranted until the real live Darcy showed up in her video. Then the costume became utterly irrelevant.

That night was one of the worst of her life.

Charlotte had insisted they take turns using her tiny apartment's bed while the other slept on the couch, but Lizzie hadn't taken her up on the offer until now. She didn't mind the couch; she could fall asleep practically anywhere. But not tonight. Tonight, after she finally relented to having a turn in the bed, she tossed and turned, rearranged the pillows and blankets a dozen times and still had no rest.

She could see the bag of costumes silhouetted in the moonlight, resting on a nearby chair. Though it was too dark to see the newsie cap distinctly, she had the irrational feeling it was mocking her. _Thought you were so clever, didn't you? Make fun of Darcy on your silly little videos and everything will be fine. Until you blurt out a sarcastic suggestion for him to watch them, idiot. Now he'll see every moment with the cap and bowtie. He'll be furious. It doesn't matter that it's accurate or witty. No one likes to be repeatedly insulted, and this isn't exactly Mr. Good-Natured here. This is the guy who _never forgives_. You've really dug yourself into a hole with this one, Lizzie Bennet. Maybe you should flee the country while you still can._

She wanted to shout at it. _Oh really? Then I'd better burn you, because you're the most damning evidence. What do you think of that?_

That would probably be a bad idea on the chance that it woke up Charlotte and convinced her that her best friend was in need of emergency psychiatric help for arguing with a hat. So she rolled over, buried her face in the pillow and tried to block out everything.

As the week wore on, Lizzie's anxiety eased just a little. She didn't see or hear from Darcy, so there might be a chance he wasn't planning a lawsuit. Not that she had any idea how long it took to arrange such things. Maybe he was just waiting for her to let her guard down so he could spring it on her when she least expected it.

Well, he did spring something on her, and it was definitely what she least expected.

Back at Charlotte's place, she read the letter for what must have been the fourth or fifth time. Every re-read made her more confused. Except for his over-formal tone and the arrogance of thinking he knew what was best for Bing, nothing in this letter matched what she thought she knew of Darcy.

She tucked the letter away, deep inside the bag of costumes. Maybe she'd find more answers in the video footage. She opened the file and skipped through the intro with Charlotte to the moment of Darcy's surprise entrance. She flinched in tandem with her video-self. The guy sure was good at sneaking up on people. Was he some kind of secret ninja?

And what was up with the bowtie? What did it mean, that he had deliberately chosen to wear one after seeing the costume she had used to mock him? All that time she had prided herself on being able to skewer Darcy, and it turned out her barbs didn't even affect him. Yeah, she was relieved there wasn't going to be a lawsuit – assuming Darcy was telling the truth about that – so it was stupid to wish he had been more insulted than he was. Was that really what was bothering her? That her mockery wasn't nearly as clever and cutting as she thought it was?

No. She knew it wasn't. The Darcy from the letter and the Darcy in this latest video were not the Darcy she had made up with costume theater. She had created a simulacrum, a construct that bore a superficial resemblance to the real person, but nothing beyond that. It wasn't easy to admit it, but his written words offered her a glimpse of hidden depths she had never imagined. Like the possibility that he was a human being with feelings.

_That _was what was bothering her. He had feelings, and she might have hurt them. Maybe he had deserved it. It didn't matter. If she took a step back and looked at who had behaved more badly, it had to be her. She was the mean one, the nasty one.

It got worse when Caroline showed up. Was Lizzie really any better than her? Sure, Caroline was deceptive and sneaky while Lizzie had put everything out in the open, but both of them had been caught, one way or another, by Darcy. Caroline's panic was painfully familiar.

When she put the cap on Lizzie's head, it made her sick to her stomach. She managed to disguise it with a sarcastic smile, and eventually caught Caroline in her lies. That was admittedly satisfying. But it didn't change the fact that Lizzie had serious misjudgments of her own to deal with.

After Caroline fled, Lizzie turned to her costume bag. There was the newsie cap and bowtie, right at the top. She hesitated, then snatched up the cap and stuck the letter inside of it. Let that remind her of the real Darcy, if she was ever tempted to turn to costume theater again, tempted to take the lazy route. Then she upended the whole thing, buried the cap and tie at the very bottom, and stuffed the rest of the props on top of them.

Maybe she would burn them after all, when she got back home.


	5. Verisimilitude

Lizzie didn't burn them. For a few weeks, she didn't touch the cap and bowtie at all except to occasionally re-read the letter. Then she learned she was going to Pemberley Digital…and then she learned it was Darcy's company.

She packed, unpacked and repacked for her trip at least three times. Too often she chose a top or a dress to bring along only to remember she had worn it while filming a video that made fun of Darcy. There were so _many _of them. It didn't leave much clothing without any unpleasant associations. Definitely not the gray and red floral dress. That one was currently tucked away at the very back of her closet.

And what about her costumes? Lizzie had used a few of them since coming home from Collins and Collins, but the cap and bowtie were still buried deep along with the letter. She definitely wouldn't have any use for them at Pemberley. It was probably better to keep them as far from Darcy as possible. Bad enough she was coming to his company; she didn't need bring along any extra reminders of what she had done to him.

But when she went to take them out of the bag and hide them somewhere in her closet, she hesitated at the sight of the letter resting innocently in the cap. That letter, or at least what it represented, was the only thing that kept her from blindly continuing to badmouth Darcy and becoming the worst possible version of herself. She needed to remember that she had made mistakes. It wasn't for costume theater anymore. It was for paying penance.

Besides, what absurd circumstances would have Darcy rifling through her bag of costumes?

_A few absurd circumstances later..._

After the door shut behind him, Lizzie folded up her flannel shirt absently, her mind unable to focus on anything but the memory of Darcy in a newsie cap and bowtie. In all her portrayals of Darcy through costume theater, she had never once imagined him as someone who would actually wear that costume. Somehow, putting on that guise, that false portrayal, had made him seem _more_ real.

Verisimilitude, indeed.

As she put her costume away, she saw her version of the newsie cap just visible underneath the floppy blue hat. If Darcy hadn't volunteered his own costume, would she have asked him to wear that one? She doubted she would have dared. It hardly seemed like something they were ready to joke about. And yet Darcy _had_ joked about it, assuming she had interpreted his subtle tone correctly.

She used to think he said _It's fine; I don't care about that _because he had no deep feelings, or because he saw her as so far beneath him that her feeble mockeries weren't worthy of his notice. Later, she wondered if he was able to let it go because he was far more capable of forgiving people than he gave himself credit for. Now she knew that was true, but she hadn't considered the additional possibility, before now, that he actually _enjoyed_ her videos, that he had a sense of humor and was able to appreciate her goofiness even when it was used to make fun of him.

After another week and a half, their interactions had changed enough that she dared to ask him directly. Yes. Even when it led indirectly to her calling him a newsie, he liked her use of costume theater. Now she was feeling really bold. So she told him he had to be her partner in this particular portrayal. And somehow, miraculously, he agreed to go along with it.

"Let's see," she said, sifting thoughtfully through the props in her bag. "What could we use for Gigi? Jane's flower?"

"That…could work," Darcy said, plainly reluctant to wear a flower in his hair.

"But she's not Jane, so we'll need some additional prop to distinguish Gigi's costume from hers. What do you think?"

"Well." Darcy cleared his throat and reached for the newsie cap that was poking out of the edge of the bag. "She is a Darcy, after all."

Lizzie nearly stopped breathing, frozen with dread as he pulled out the cap. But no letter dropped to the ground; it must have already fallen out somewhere inside the bag while she was rifling through it. Thank _goodness_. She hoped the panic wasn't too obvious on her face. She would definitely be cutting this part of the footage afterwards.

She managed a smile again and said, "That's perfect."

It wasn't until after she had edited and posted the video that she realized two very shocking things. First of all, Darcy had worn the cap. _The_ newsie cap. Sure, it was only for a minute, and it was to play his sister, not himself, but still. Even a day ago, she couldn't have envisioned a single alternate universe wherein that cap would end up on his head. Yet here they were, with genuine video proof.

Secondly, he hadn't questioned why she brought the cap to Pemberley. Maybe she was only one who tended to overthink things, but somehow she doubted that Darcy would flippantly dismiss the implications of certain details. She was sure he would have wondered why she had it here, what she intended to do with it, and what it meant about her current opinion of him. Yet he hadn't said a word about it, accepting its presence good-naturedly, while his only reservations had to do with a fear of hurting his sister's feelings.

She dug through the bag again, found the well-worn letter, and tucked it back inside the newsie cap. It probably wasn't necessary anymore. She wasn't about to forget just how much her perception of Darcy had changed since he first handed her that letter. But a few reminders couldn't hurt.


	6. Memories

_Short and sad, but the happy conclusion is coming up next!_

Being reminded of Darcy _did_ hurt, way more than Lizzie could have expected. Two weeks since she left Pemberley, then three, then over a month without any contact. No word from him, but there was no forgetting him. Everything reminded her of him. She was writing up a report about his company, for goodness sake. Pemberley permeated her every thought, and Darcy basically was Pemberley.

During that first harrowing week after she came home, there was no place for something as frivolous as costume theater. After that, she was too moody to be playful. Eventually she tried a little impersonation of her mother's antics, but Jane clearly didn't enjoy it. To be honest Lizzie didn't really have her heart in it either. When Caroline burst in on her during another impersonation, Lizzie was just trying to distract herself from the very things Caroline then brought up with brutal bluntness.

Now she was all alone, and totally in the dark about why Darcy had done the things he'd done or what he thought of her. Now, costume theater seemed less a silly distraction and more the only way to keep a hold on her sanity.

She couldn't repress a sad little smile when she pulled Jane's flower off the newsie cap. It was pathetic, really, thinking of how he was the last person to wear this. As if objects had any value invested in them from the people who touched them. It got even worse when she reattached the flower to play Gigi's part. She was practically caressing it now, thinking of him and that long-suffering sidelong look he had given her when he put the cap on his head. She was going to have to edit out a _lot_ of wistful, longing moments when she cut this episode together.

After she made that painfully awkward phone call and shut off the camera, she put away her phone and just sat there, staring morosely into the distance. Somehow the newsie cap ended up in her hands again, and she clutched it like a lifeline.


	7. Transforming the Referent

_Well, this is it. Thanks for reading and responding!_

"Is something the matter?" William asked, startling Lizzie out of her reverie.

"Oh, no, I'm all right." She looked up at him from her laptop screen. "Why, was I making a face?"

He nodded. "You seemed….disgusted."

"Nope. Just trying to figure out the phraseology in this sentence. 'Costumed performances, which utilize individually designated props for each portrayed person, provide a hyper-real identity that approaches the truth while never quite arriving at its essence.'"

He hesitated, then said, "It's a bit overwrought, isn't it?"

She raised her eyebrows. "That's rich, coming from you."

"I have never disparaged the use of simple brevity. The reader may forget how the sentence began before getting to the end of it."

"Fine, fine." She deleted the entire line and tried to decide how to start over.

"You're making that face again."

She gave him a highly exaggerated batting of her eyelashes. "Do you have a problem with my face?"

"Never. I was only wondering if something was bothering you other than your thesis write-up."

She had learned all too well, after months of denying her feelings, that it was better to take such questions seriously instead of brushing them off. "Huh. I didn't think so. I guess working on this report might being stirring up a few less-than-pleasant memories."

William gripped her hand. "I'm sorry your studies have to be associated with such personal things."

"Well, it's my own fault, isn't it? Basing my thesis project on a video blog about my own life and all that."

"Perhaps. But I'm sure I share at least an equal share of the blame."

"Nah. I just have to face the fact that I kind of have a love-hate relationship with costume theater. Especially that newsie cap."

"Really?"

"Yup. I loved it when it gave me the chance to mock you and make me feel clever. Then I hated it when I was afraid it might lead to a lawsuit. Then I had a sort of grudging respect for it as a reminder of my mistakes. I started getting pretty fond of it again at Pemberley. For a couple of weeks after, I hated and loved it at the same time. But I'm good now." She looked at him, mouth quirking playfully. "I've made my peace with it."

"You might have a fascinating discourse somewhere in there," William said, brow furrowed in thought. "About how a symbol can both transcend and transform its original referent."

"Mmm." She nestled closer to him. "Why can't you stick around for the next few weeks while I finish writing this?"

"You can call me anytime you want, for thesis advice or otherwise."

"Yes, but when you're speaking media studies jargon over the phone, I can't do this." She pulled him into a hungry kiss, which ended with a frantic grab at the laptop just as it was about to crash to the ground.

"Very true," he said afterward, breathlessly. "Which means you'll probably be far more productive."

"Yeah," she grumbled, shutting the laptop.

"Does this mean you're done being productive for today?"

"I'm done writing, anyway. The longer I'm at it, the more convoluted my sentences get." She set the computer aside and stretched her stiff arms.

"Did you really develop a fondness for that cap?" he asked after a moment.

She reddened. "Yeah…pretty sad, huh?"

"Not really. In recent months, I've discovered an unusual liking for blue plaid- patterned shirts."

"Well, that's just weird," she said teasingly, drawing close for another kiss.

"So…" he murmured, putting his hand to her face, "does this mean you'd like to see me sporting the cap and bowtie more often?"

She grinned. "I wouldn't object to it. But let's be honest. It's never been about the newsie cap. Hyper-reality is nothing next to this."

Judging from his response, he was in complete agreement.

She kept the costume; she kept all the costume theater props for the sake of sentimentality. But they mostly stayed in storage. She had exchanged them for something far better.


End file.
